In addition to its metaphorical and practical influences, the internet has informed New Agers’ cosmologies and corresponding bodily practices by requiring a rethinking of the physical universe in the face of virtual ubiquity. It has allowed them to imagine new ways of making space in their ontological realities for metaphysical, energetic substances. We can see, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, that the digital has made the spiritual ever more material and situated in the flesh for New Agers searching for the true nature of existence. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork from 2016 to 2018 and ongoing research with energy healers in the San Francisco Bay Area, this “anthropology of virtual matter”—understanding how the virtual has caused a paradigm shift in how we think about the material world—gives us fresh eyes with which to see the New Age. It even forces us to reconsider spiritualities as material ontologies, the conception of materiality that shapes how believers understand and interact with the world around them through their bodies, sensoria, and metaphysical appendages.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
November 2021
Research Article|
November 01 2021
Cyberbodies: The New Age and the Internet
Torang X. Asadi
Nova Religio (2021) 25 (2): 40–60.
Citation
Torang X. Asadi; Cyberbodies: The New Age and the Internet. Nova Religio 1 November 2021; 25 (2): 40–60. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2021.25.2.40
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.